Monday, January 29, 2007

Pixar 2 Student Work, Fall '06

I'd like to post some of the student work from last semester's Pixar 2 class. Most of these clips are from our 2-person dialogue assignment and the other is from an assignment we called "Subtext From a Hat". This involved giving each student an original line of dialogue. We then had them draw a slip of paper from a hat that had some sort of emotion or character trait on it for the subtext of the perfomance. Here are some of the assignments we thought were particularly successful. We're proud of all our students and their efforts. Hope you enjoy these clips.

I thought Julie Choi's clip was really great, the poses were so alive, the girl pushing the guy's hand away was very well done.

have a small crit too, the guy slapping his knee with his left hand feels too IK, I would have made some more overlap in upperarm vs forearm vs wrist. also, in the same action when the body is getting straight, the head again feels too ik, usualy you want to delay the neck by a frame or two.

that's a good question... is it a good idea to put something on your reel that is an almost exact, albeit well executed, copy of someone else's acting... especiall from such a film as critically acclaimed as captain ron??

I think by "the head again feels too ik," Anonymous meant that it was too stiff on the way up and could have used some overlap. I, personally, would have tried more overlap and see how it feels, but what's there right now works very well too, I think. There's always a danger of adding too much overlap everywhere and starting to look loosy goosy.

that is a good question. I think an animator should be able to use whatever reference they have available. especially for physical stuff. If you have video of the voice actor to work from thats great. i say use it if it will help the performance, but you cant let it become a crutch.

You should be using reference as a study help and only really stick to it if the medium demands it, like live-action movies (Davy Jones for instance). When you do cartoony stuff I think you have to be very careful, because if you stay too close to the reference, it starts looking mocappy.

But if you're doing an acting exercise and you recreate the same shot from which the audio clip is being taken from (like Captain Ron), then aren't you missing the point of the exercise of coming up with your own acting ideas?

Ya, it would be nice to get some feedback from the spline doctors about this one: Chris' clip uses acting that is ripped directly from the movie the dialog was taken from (beat for beat; almost looks rotoscoped--even the set he built and the staging of the action is the same), and while it is technically *very* well done (which he should get credit for), is this kind of thing encouraged? Frowned upon? If a film studio saw this on a reel and identified it as being lifted directly from a movie, would that person be dinged for it?

The danger of pulling audio from film is the temptation or subconscious chance of being too heavily influenced by the source. If such a piece exisists on your reel and the person who reviews it recognizes it, it will more than likely reflect negatively on you. By the way, you'll have to pardon Mike Wu and I that we haven't seen the cinematic triumph that was "Capt. Ron".